Millar + Netflix unleash ‘Sharkey the Bounty Hunter’ next year

Millar says the new sci-fi series is “all the things ‘Star Wars’ or Marvel can’t get away with.”

For their third comic book collaboration, Mark Millar and Netflix are headed to space next February with Sharkey the Bounty Hunter. The new series will be drawn by former Wolverine and Astonishing X-Men artist Simone Bianchi and will be published by Image Comics.

Sharkey the Bounty Hunter follows The Magic Order and Prodigy, the first two comics from Millar following the acquisition of his Millarworld imprint last year.

“When I joined Netflix on staff last year we had this crazy plan of a big sci-fi universe of movies and Sharkey is the first of these,” said Millar, President and Chief Creative Officer, Millarworld, a subsidiary of Netflix. “The Magic Order is our fantasy/ horror franchise, Prodigy is our big adventure movies and Sharkey kicks off a whole world of sci-fi that’s just a great action comedy in the style of all the movies I grew up with. I love blue-collar heroes and I like the parent/ kid dynamic from movies like Paper Moon or Leon: The Professional and, of course, Big Daddy and Hit-Girl. This is all the things Star Wars or Marvel can’t get away with. We start where they kinda draw the line and I love this freedom creatively as we’ve never seen space done this way before. To have Simone Bianchi drawing the comic-book side of all this and working from the amazing production designs is an honour. The team is just incredible. Simone and I have talking about working together since my days at Marvel so it’s a total blessing to finally be working with this Italian genius.”

Here’s the description from Image: “Set in a brilliant new sci-fi universe, Sharkey is a blue-collar bounty-hunter tracking criminals across the galaxy in his converted, rocket-powered ice-cream truck. Aided and abetted by his ten-year-old partner, he’s out for the biggest bounty of his career.” It sounds like a movie is already in the works as well.